A vehicle is an apparatus that is motorized to move in a desired direction by control of a user riding therein. A typical example of the vehicle is an automobile.
Vehicles have been increasingly equipped with various sensors and electronic devices to provide user convenience. In particular, various apparatuses for driver convenience are under development.
Recently, as attention is increasingly drawn to autonomous vehicles, research on sensors to be installed in the autonomous vehicles is underway. Sensors installed in autonomous vehicles include object detection sensors such as a camera, an infrared sensor, a radar, a global positioning system (GPS), a lidar and a gyroscope. Thereamong, the camera plays an important role as a sensor operating like the eyes of a person. If the vehicle collides with a pedestrian in an accident, the accident is very likely to result in considerable loss of life. Conventionally, technologies for preventing collision with pedestrians have been widely researched and developed. These technologies have recently been widely applied even to vehicles in mass production.
However, even a vehicle adopting a collision prevention technology is difficult to avoid collision according to a sudden movement of a pedestrian. In this regard, technologies such as a hood pop-up apparatus and a pedestrian protection airbag (e.g., Korean Patent Application Publication No. 2003-0085076) for protecting pedestrians when collision occurs have been developed.
In addition to these technologies, if research and development of a technology for controlling a suspension to adjust an expected impacted portion of the pedestrian are conducted, pedestrians may be more efficiently protected when collision occurs.